Chipotle’s Hypocrisy and Pandering to Anti Science

Appealing to emotions of disgust the hypocrisy that is Chipotle

It seems all logical – label GMO products, because we want know what we are consuming. Then when a large fast-food company like Chipotle states, “Food with integrity,” it seems as if Chipotle is being a responsible corporation serving fast food to the public. Chipotle is serving up hypocrisy with a bowl full of calories.

While Chipotle feeds the fear of America’s disgust and ignorance about GMO it still feeds them with food that has an average of 1000 calories – in a single meal (most meals should have 300-400 calories to maintain weight at a reasonable level). Chipotle wants you to think the food is healthy – but wants you to ignore that you are going to eat too much if you eat their burrito bowl (sure it is healthy, but too much is a bad thing).

GMO foods are safe – over 600 peer reviewed articles, 15 years of feeding cattle and people, and over 2 billion acres planted. Scientists have a broad consensus that the food is safe, and yet, people fear the “frankenfoods,” or the genes. Ignoring that most of our food today has been genetically altered – we just have a better way of doing it. In fact, as I blogged before GMO:They’re Not What You’ve Been Told. And yet we have the lawyer Steven Druker and his book which I reviwed: Altered Genes: Druker’s New Book is Filled with Logical Fallacies.

The problem with labeling GMO foods is not that we inform the public, the problem is that we set it apart as something that is different or to be warned about. You can argue all you wish about we should label everything- source every single food molecule, and yet it won’t help the things that do kill people: food borne illness and obesity from overly large portions. But to label them is a trap: see GMO: Part 2 – The Promise, the Fear, Labeling, Frankenfoods

Of course, Chipotle isn’t “pure” in its anti-GMO publicity stunt – while the oils may be GMO free, the pork and beef are not. They are safe- GMO is safe, but the fear of them overwhelms an ignorant portion of the non-science public.

Image taken from Facebook – I don’t know who the cartoonist is

What Chipotle has done is pander to the anti-science movement. Perhaps if they re-formulated their products to have less meat, more beans, less cheese, thus less calories – but they won’t do that. They still want to sell abundant foods to a sick America, fooling them into thinking because it doesn’t have GMO that they will be healthy.

The more dangerous element is that Chipotle is pandering to an anti-science movement.

About Dr. Terry SimpsonDr. Terry Simpson received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Chicago where he spent several years in the Kovler Viral Oncology laboratories doing genetic engineering. He found he liked people more than petri dishes, and went to medical school. Dr. Simpson, a weight loss surgeon is an advocate of culinary medicine. The first surgeon to become certified in Culinary Medicine, he believes teaching people to improve their health through their food and in their kitchen. On the other side of the world, he has been a leading advocate of changing health care to make it more "relationship based," and his efforts awarded his team the Malcolm Baldrige award for healthcare in 2011 for the NUKA system of care in Alaska and in 2013 Dr Simpson won the National Indian Health Board Area Impact Award. A frequent contributor to media outlets discussing health related topics and advances in medicine, he is also a proud dad, husband, author, cook, and surgeon “in that order.” For media inquiries, please visit www.terrysimpson.com.

Latest Comments

I guess you don’t read this blog – because in the blog I have said,” Let me make this clear from the outset – high fructose corn syrup is the single largest health hazard since smoking. There is no one product that impacts the lives of so many, and is responsible for the increase in obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.” http://www.yourdoctorsorders.com/2012/10/high-fructose-corn-syrup-health-risks/

Pointing out what they do is important. People can make their own decisions. Their food isn’t local, it isn’t free of chemicals, it is highly processed, and it has too many calories. I want to point out that this is just bad food – served by a bad corporation – that feeds on the ignorance of people. For those not ignorant- don’t eat there.